Striking new building a model for city’s urban landscape
Taking stock of San Francisco’s commercial core these days is a multilayered experience. There’s the hollowed-out aftermath of the pandemic, the angst over what might lie ahead and the fact that construction is still taking place — shaping the future landscape, for better or worse.
Which brings us to the corner of Bryant and Zoe streets, where a modest but striking new office building called 531 Bryant offers a template for how, going forward, fresh additions to the urban landscape can serve to enrich the texture of what’s already here. Visually, it enlivens its surroundings while still feeling rooted. Better yet, the 531 Bryant newcomer is genuinely engaging where it touches ground, with elements that should attract nearby workers and residents, as well as the tenants upstairs.
And, yes, this holds true even though the 50,000-square-foot building is vacant.
That’s what happens when a structure billed as “the NextGen of South Park” debuts at a time of 34% vacancy rates and as tech-related companies continue to shed physical space. A project conceived when this low-slung district was anointed by planners to be the city’s next growth zone, Central SoMa, now joins a part of town riddled with “for lease” signs.
But none of that erodes the underlying quality of the deceptively straightforward structure designed by Handel Architects for Urban Land Development.
The newcomer is five stories along Bryant Street between Third and Fourth streets, with a notch down to four stories along alley-like Zoe Street. Full-floor windows sit deep within a muscular right-angled grid — but where blue-collar survivors to
the east and west are skinned in faded masonry, this has a vivid bronze sheen even though the polymer tint was baked into the burly aluminum frame.
“We wanted to do justice to what was already there,” said Glenn Rescalvo, the partner in charge of Handel’s San Francisco office. “One thing leads to the next.”
All this offers a primer on what strong contextual design can be. The design is contemporary, no question, but the architectural rhythm and forms of 531 Bryant feel like they belong.
It’s not just another glassskinned arriviste plopped onto the scene.
The innovative aspects here, the elements that deserve to be echoed in the next set of downtown buildings that (someday?) go into the ground, involve the scene along Zoe Street.
At the time the building was being reviewed, city planning standards called for conventional storefronts at least 25 feet deep along the atmospheric alleyway. Instead, developers successfully made the case that the two spaces along Zoe Street would do better as “micro-retail” slots — long but shallow, crafted for grab-and-go vendors rather than conventional cafes or franchise boutiques.
Rather than fill the entire site, meanwhile, Urban Land made room for a 15-foot-wide courtyard between 531 Bryant and its neighbor on Zoe.
That space, though diminutive, has the feel of a linear oasis. The neighbor agreed to allow artwork by Filipino muralist Vivian Capulong on the adjacent wall; the courtyard’s plants and benches are made more compelling by the towering palm and statuesque maple rising beyond the courtyard’s border, inside the block.
The inspiration for the microunits, according to Susan Sagy of Urban Land, is Linden Street in Hayes Valley, the urbane alley where Blue Bottle Coffee was born. It’s a spot people stroll to and then linger, enjoying the casual intimacy that cities can provide. The courtyard should amplify this: Urban Land’s plan is to keep it fully open and accessible to the public during daylight hours, though there’s a tall glass gate for security.
“There’s very little open space or breathing room in this part of the neighborhood,” said Sagy, Urban Land’s managing director. “I give the planners so much credit — they really came around” on allowing for more sidewalklevel flexibility than one-size-fitsall zoning would allow.
The result is a stark contrast to the rest of this stretch of Bryant Street, which functions as a one-way siphon to the Bay Bridge where drivers race forward when they aren’t bogged down in commute gridlock. Neighboring blocks suffer from the same burden of wide streets and narrow sidewalks dating back to when this area was defined by warehouses, printers and clothing makers.
That’s why South Park, with its small buildings and oval lawn, began gentrifying in the 1980s and now is the high-priced haven of investors and the like that 531 Bryant hopes to attract. It was an unexpected respite, green amid gray.
It’s also why the inventiveness of 531 Bryant, if not the specific details, suggests a model for other developers and architects when this part of the city stirs back to life.
Our best cities offer a diversity of experiences. They should be serendipitous, not formulaic. This is especially true at ground level, where individual structures tie into the larger public realm.
Instead, too often, the bottom of a building is an afterthought. Developers do just enough to satisfy City Hall, such as provide streetside retail spaces that might sit vacant for a decade, then focus their attention on the potential profit above.
The top floors of 531 Bryant are well-done, no question, with high ceilings and plenty of natural daylight (and yes, given the proximity of the elevated freeway to the north, the windows muffle outside noise). It’s the potential of Zoe Street, though, that sticks in the memory.
I’ve no idea how or when places like downtown and Central SoMa will begin to revive. But they will. When this happens, San Francisco has a chance to nudge the next wave of growth in a direction that is more varied than before, with more of an emphasis on the overlapping textures of urban life. It’s a tall order, and small touches like the ones at 531 Bryant can help point the way.